by Deborah Calla
I was married at age 20 to a man who was 11 years my senior. When I married the man, I was a recent Brazilian arrival doing a lot of drugs and hanging out with all the wrong people. I thought getting married would settle me down and straighten me out, but instead it marked the beginning of the worst period of my life. The man was intelligent and creative, but he was also possessive, manipulative and had an ego that didn’t allow any other human to occupy the same space as his. Within the first year the intelligent man showed himself as delusional and abusive…Continued

My husband was a man. I’m not talking about the fact he had a penis, I’m talking about the fact that he was secure in whom he was and therefore did not have to play games, oppress or be threatened by my independence and strength or anybody else’s.

I have met plenty of men that hit, emotionally terrorize and compete with their partners, sisters and daughters.

I watched a film yesterday, The Stoning of Soraya M., produced in 2008 and released in mid 2009, which tells the story of family in rural Iran. The husband, twenty years older than the wife, decides he wants a new wife. No problem with having two wives and no problem that the second wife is fourteen year old. The problem is that he would have to support both families and he didn’t want to. So he had a brilliant idea; accuse his current wife of infidelity and get hid of her. Soraya M. was stoned to death by her family and friends. She was betrayed by the village where she grew up in and where she had been a child, daughter, wife and friend. While she was stoned by the mob, the villagers in frenzy kept screaming “god is great.”

The obvious detestable issues of this story are: 1 – What god would be happy with the stoning of a human? 2 – What sadistic and barbaric people can stone another human? 3- What world do we live in that a man can accuse a woman of anything and have she put to death? I invite you to be outraged.

While countries have the right to sovereignty, no country, no community has the right to oppress and destroy women because they are afraid of us owning up to our strength and sexuality. Even in the western world where stoning and beating of a woman is not sanctioned by the law, many of us endure rapes, sexual assaults and daily emotional warfare. That’s why I say with pride that my husband was a man. He was not intimidated by me; to the contrary he wanted to give me the support to be even more myself.

We must find a way to help stop this barbaric treatment of women in places like Iran, Nigeria, Pakistan and Afghanistan to name a few. Not because of any political reason but because in those places women are powerless and we people that are decent can’t turn our eyes away because it happens in another country and far away from us.

We decent people also can’t turn our eyes away from all the women in our country that have had their pride and self esteem stripped away by bullies who are so insecure that they need to terrorize to feel in control. We need to let these bullies know that even though they oppress, all they have achieved is a false sense of control because real power comes from not being afraid to accept others as they are. We men and women need to let these bullies know they are nothing more than boys.

Here in the western world where we have the luxury of examining and experiencing social gender interactions, I am glad to be treated as a woman and to me gender interaction means equality in differences. My husband opened the door for me, he walked on the side of traffic, and he carried the groceries and the suitcases. I took care of him and he of me and we shared all the emotional and financial responsibilities of a couple’s life.

Maybe Iran and Nigeria are goals that are harder to attain in a shorter time frame, but we can in the meantime educate our children and brothers about the true meaning of power. And we can be real sisters and brothers to the women that need help embracing their power and sexuality.

May the boys grow up to be men and may we women be proud to be ourselves.

In 2007 I finally got to produce a film I had been working on for ten years. The film based on a play deals with hope, sexual abuse, and relationships.

“A love story set against the decaying skyline of downtown Los Angeles between a runaway from a suburban small town and an illegal from Mexico. As the emotional walls between them come down a more horrific picture appears, that of a boy searching for a mother who left him behind and may or may not be alive and that of a girl whose idea of love and violence are inseparable. A Beautiful Life is what these two teenagers want and will fight for with the help of an exotic dancer who dreams of a singing career.”

We didn’t have enough money or enough time but had a committed cast and crew. There were many difficulties and we were able to overcome each one of them.

On October 2nd A Beautiful Life, will be released in a number of theatres across the US. The film features Bai Ling, Jesse Garcia, Dana Delany, Debi Mazar, and Angela Sarafyan.

Below is the link to an interview I gave today about the making of the film.